by OSCAR MAYR
USER RESERCH
Without users, there's no use of any application or service.
User Research captures the essence of the users (people) to enable informed decision making when designing a product or a service.
User Research is a science that involves people psychology and can lead to unintended consequences.
There are many research methods that help get through a discovery phase and define the direction of travel or a product backlog.
QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS
Whether through surveys or analytics, quantitative analysis is an ally to user researchers and organisations.
Quantitative analysis often tells the "WHAT", the "HOW" and "WHERE" something is working or not but, it will not tells the "WHY" the users are doing what they are doing, that is the qualitative analysis and encompass different research methods.
QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS
What people SAY they do often is not the same as what they do.
Qualitative analysis is about the "WHY" the users are doing what they are doing in certain touch-points of the journey.
That is why using quantitative with qualitative analysis is so powerful. It answers all the key questions "WHY", "WHAT", "WHERE" and "HOW".
Qualitative analysis is the art of immersion, understanding and translating why people do what they do in a certain context.
PERSONAS & USER JOURNEY MAPPING
The translation of the research usually sees the user researcher employ two tools called personas and user journey mapping.
The former syntheses the insights gathered among users to produce an output that defines a user group with goals, needs and frustrations.
The latter represents the journey the persona has to do to achieve one or multiple goals. It encompasses observation, KPIs, pain points that will be later translated into opportunities/hypotheses.
